There are two ways to get a link from a news site. You can chase the easy, low-quality placements — the directories and aggregators that pile up but barely move rankings — or you can earn a real editorial mention built around something no competitor can copy: a genuine quote from the actual business owner. On the Unscripted SEO podcast, SEO Interactive’s Robert Spinrad described this as the more challenging and more rewarding work his agency’s internal PR team actively hunts for, especially for home-service clients: the right mention, in an editorial context, sourced from the owner and never AI-generated.
That last detail is the whole game. Anyone can paste a prompt into ChatGPT and generate a bland quote. Editors can tell, readers can tell, and increasingly the signal-quality gap decides whether you earn the link at all. This is a cornerstone of our local & offline link building approach, and it pairs directly with earning guest citation links where the owner’s expertise is the reason the link exists.
Why the Quote Has to Come From a Human
Robert’s broader warning about AI applies precisely to digital PR. His agency uses AI tools daily and is transparent with clients about it, but they draw a hard line on advice and authenticity.
We encourage clients to be wary of people saying they are AI experts — because this whole thing is brand new. We’re all learning.— Robert Spinrad, Unscripted SEO
The same caution governs a PR quote. A journalist is not looking for a competent paragraph; they are looking for lived experience an AI cannot have. Robert made the point that an LLM can cite experience but never lived it, and that every client his agency serves is a family or small business with seasonality, pain points, and a specific market the model has no context for. That situational knowledge is exactly what makes an owner quote quotable. Strip it out and replace it with a generated sentence, and you have handed the reporter the one thing they will not print.
The Owner-Quote Pitch Process
Turn owner expertise into an editorial link
The process is deliberately human at every step — that is the point, not a limitation.
Find the reporter, not the outlet
Identify the specific journalist who covers your beat locally — housing, small business, home improvement, whatever fits. Read their recent pieces so your pitch matches what they actually write about.
Lead with a real angle
Offer a timely hook the owner can speak to: a seasonal surge, a local price trend, a common homeowner mistake. You are pitching a story the reporter needs sources for, not asking for a favor.
Interview your own owner
Get the business owner on a ten-minute call and capture their answer in their words. Keep the phrasing, the specifics, the local detail. Do not sand it into corporate copy and do not generate it.
Deliver a clean, attributable quote
Send two or three sentences the reporter can drop in verbatim, with the owner’s full name, title, and business. Make it effortless to use and effortless to link the business.
Never substitute AI for the owner
If the owner is unavailable, wait. An AI-written quote is worse than no quote — it risks the relationship and the credibility that earns future mentions.
Follow up and build the beat
Thank the reporter, share the published piece, and offer to be a standing local source. One good quote turns into a repeat relationship and a recurring link source.
What a Good Editorial Link Is Worth
Why owner-sourced editorial links outperform
One authentic quote earns a placement that scaled tactics cannot reach.
Genuine authority
An editorial quote signals to Google that a real, credentialed local expert stands behind the business — not a submitted listing.
AI-resistant by design
The value comes from lived experience an LLM cannot fabricate, which is exactly why it earns the mention when generated pitches get ignored.
Compounding relationships
Reporters return to sources who make their job easier, so each genuine quote makes the next editorial link cheaper to earn.
These are the citations that show up when you check what an AI recommends locally. Robert noted that when you search a local business in ChatGPT or Gemini and read the sources, you see the multi-platform footprint that trust is built from. An editorial mention with a real owner quote lands squarely in that set of signals — and it does double duty by strengthening the citation and quote-based links that reinforce the owner’s expertise across the web.
Start With One Real Quote
You do not need a PR department to run this. Pick one story angle your owner can genuinely speak to, find the one reporter who covers it, and get a real quote on the record. Faithful, specific, human — that is the entire advantage. Robert’s team frames itself as humble experts who keep learning, and that same posture wins editorial links: show up with real knowledge, make it easy to attribute, and never let a language model speak for the person whose name is on the door.
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